Saturday, February 21, 2009
Visiting time
Paid two visits on waking up today. The first was to a ground floor flatlet in what was essentially a large bedsit house, somewhere in London. Run by a lady. This is a place which today associates to the bedsit we lived in at Harringey West when first married, many years ago, but the location is wrong for the place visited this morning. This is a place, somewhere else in London, which I visit in dream from time to time and which I am fairly sure is fictitious. Draws in elements from real life but is not real.
Maybe the visit today was because yesterday's lunch was a cow chop (that is to say, a one rib peice of fore rib; served, as on the last occasion, for lunch for two, with new style mushrooms with beef dripping from the chop as well as butter to tart up the boiled rice). This links to the butcher at Harringey West railway station, a butcher who was, I think, a Greek Cypriot, and who introduced us to various interesting cuts of meat which could be accommodated in the Baby Belling with which we cooked at that time. One of them was the excellent top rib of beef, which even the butcher at Cheam now finds hard to source. This links to the bedsit at the same location, albeit on the other side of the large railway cutting (the main line north out of Kings Cross) which links to the fictitious flatlet.
The second visit was rather fleeting and was to a restaurant. A place which we have visited a number of times over the years, although not recently. Not sure whether it is real or not. A small restaurant, occupying a premise about the size of the sort of single shop you used to get on London high streets, say Tooting High Street, although I associate to Queensway. Arranged on two levels, with the inner level below the outer level and with the two levels separated by a balustrade. Maybe a piano? Rather posh place, which did a nice line in luncheon. Reviewed in the foodie section of newspapers. We could only just about afford to eat there. Maybe more will come back to me during the day.
In meanwhile, checking the spelling of 'premise', I find that this premise is the same as that which is the premise in an argument or a chain of reasoning. My OED has to break into Arabic to explain all this - something which must have been a considerable printing expense in the first part of the 20th century and would cause a bit of flap in the first part of the 21st century. Not at all sure how to call up Arabic script in Word. The link being that the word first appeared in 12th century translations into Latin from earlier Arabic translations of Aristotle, the Greek route presumably being blocked at that time.
On a more serious note, the LRB of my last posting also contained an interesting article about torture, a propos of three books on the same subject. The article starts off by explaining that philosophers have trouble demonstrating that torture is bad. Causes all sorts of philosophical wriggling. Which struck me as a bit odd. I had thought that the point of philosophy (in this connection anyway) was to tell you whether or not torture was bad, not to provide a handy proof of something you had already decided about. Evidence to fit up the chap you knew was a villain but was too clever to leave his prints anywhere. (As I have reported before, I do not think there can be an absolute bar. There will be times when torture, while unpleasant, will be justified). Then, via China, the article gets onto the recent goings-on in and around the US. There is no doubt in my mind that these amounted to torture. It also appears that the lower ranks who did some of the dirty work were dumped on and that the higher ranks who allowed, encouraged or winked at it got off. Then it goes into the various legal shennanigans in the legal parts of the US administration as to whether torture was legal or not. It seems fairly clear that the US is party to international conventions, the intention of which was to outlaw the practice altogether. But, as always, the devil can get into the detail. It is possible to mount an argument that the current generation of terrorists are not covered. Part of this is about reciprocity: one does not extend rights to people who have no intention of affording you the same rights. As one indignant US general put it, 'they chop our heads off'. But the overall impression was that a lot of effort was put into providing a legal blanket for something which had already been decided on. I wonder what the argument against being more honest about the whole business is? At least one reasonably important person in the US wanted to bring torture into the net. If we are going to do this unsavoury thing, let us at least bring it into the net and manage it properly. At least reduce the risk that the thugs who like bashing people will be able to let rip in cellars. Reduce the risk that the whole business gets out of hand, which is what I believe has happened in this case. A lot of innocent and reasonably innocent people have been badly bashed about - some fatally - without sufficient cause.
So I think I vote for bringing in due process, which the LRB article is a bit sniffy about. I read recently that even in Elizabethan times, in England, you really needed the signature of the Queen herself to torture someone, at the very least that of a Privy Councillor. And we used to have something of the same sort for other unpleasant practises, like listening in to peoples' phone calls. The case for protection of this sort is much stronger in the case of torture.
Maybe the visit today was because yesterday's lunch was a cow chop (that is to say, a one rib peice of fore rib; served, as on the last occasion, for lunch for two, with new style mushrooms with beef dripping from the chop as well as butter to tart up the boiled rice). This links to the butcher at Harringey West railway station, a butcher who was, I think, a Greek Cypriot, and who introduced us to various interesting cuts of meat which could be accommodated in the Baby Belling with which we cooked at that time. One of them was the excellent top rib of beef, which even the butcher at Cheam now finds hard to source. This links to the bedsit at the same location, albeit on the other side of the large railway cutting (the main line north out of Kings Cross) which links to the fictitious flatlet.
The second visit was rather fleeting and was to a restaurant. A place which we have visited a number of times over the years, although not recently. Not sure whether it is real or not. A small restaurant, occupying a premise about the size of the sort of single shop you used to get on London high streets, say Tooting High Street, although I associate to Queensway. Arranged on two levels, with the inner level below the outer level and with the two levels separated by a balustrade. Maybe a piano? Rather posh place, which did a nice line in luncheon. Reviewed in the foodie section of newspapers. We could only just about afford to eat there. Maybe more will come back to me during the day.
In meanwhile, checking the spelling of 'premise', I find that this premise is the same as that which is the premise in an argument or a chain of reasoning. My OED has to break into Arabic to explain all this - something which must have been a considerable printing expense in the first part of the 20th century and would cause a bit of flap in the first part of the 21st century. Not at all sure how to call up Arabic script in Word. The link being that the word first appeared in 12th century translations into Latin from earlier Arabic translations of Aristotle, the Greek route presumably being blocked at that time.
On a more serious note, the LRB of my last posting also contained an interesting article about torture, a propos of three books on the same subject. The article starts off by explaining that philosophers have trouble demonstrating that torture is bad. Causes all sorts of philosophical wriggling. Which struck me as a bit odd. I had thought that the point of philosophy (in this connection anyway) was to tell you whether or not torture was bad, not to provide a handy proof of something you had already decided about. Evidence to fit up the chap you knew was a villain but was too clever to leave his prints anywhere. (As I have reported before, I do not think there can be an absolute bar. There will be times when torture, while unpleasant, will be justified). Then, via China, the article gets onto the recent goings-on in and around the US. There is no doubt in my mind that these amounted to torture. It also appears that the lower ranks who did some of the dirty work were dumped on and that the higher ranks who allowed, encouraged or winked at it got off. Then it goes into the various legal shennanigans in the legal parts of the US administration as to whether torture was legal or not. It seems fairly clear that the US is party to international conventions, the intention of which was to outlaw the practice altogether. But, as always, the devil can get into the detail. It is possible to mount an argument that the current generation of terrorists are not covered. Part of this is about reciprocity: one does not extend rights to people who have no intention of affording you the same rights. As one indignant US general put it, 'they chop our heads off'. But the overall impression was that a lot of effort was put into providing a legal blanket for something which had already been decided on. I wonder what the argument against being more honest about the whole business is? At least one reasonably important person in the US wanted to bring torture into the net. If we are going to do this unsavoury thing, let us at least bring it into the net and manage it properly. At least reduce the risk that the thugs who like bashing people will be able to let rip in cellars. Reduce the risk that the whole business gets out of hand, which is what I believe has happened in this case. A lot of innocent and reasonably innocent people have been badly bashed about - some fatally - without sufficient cause.
So I think I vote for bringing in due process, which the LRB article is a bit sniffy about. I read recently that even in Elizabethan times, in England, you really needed the signature of the Queen herself to torture someone, at the very least that of a Privy Councillor. And we used to have something of the same sort for other unpleasant practises, like listening in to peoples' phone calls. The case for protection of this sort is much stronger in the case of torture.
# posted by Jim @ 11:35 PM 
